The challenge was simple: Adam and Chris would each choose 3 bottles from their personal collections, have the group taste them blind, and determine whose whiskey expertise reigns supreme -- in a climactic battle to the death!! Well, close, anyhow.

The submitted bottles could not be one of the 900 whiskies already listed on this website (at the time), and the combined cost of each collector's choices had to be about $600.

To mix things up, we also threw in a $30 bargain bottle we found at Binny's, and another old Signatory dumpy that Adam and Chris had previously tasted but had vastly differing opinions on (A- vs. C). Thus, eight bottles were tasted blind -- six of them being carefully chosen, educated choices (theoretically), one of them possibly being rather lousy, and another being a complete wild card.

It turned out to be a great contest -- and Adam won, with a rare Macallan 1980 16-year Signatory dumpy leading his victory charge. Perhaps not surprisingly, many bottles that were rated in the 90's by various critics ended up faring much differently mixed into a blind (and rather random) tasting.

And to note, the Braes of Glenlivet was the disputed bottle -- Chris had originally felt it was a "C" bottle, whereas Adam felt is was "A-" -- the opinion of the group is easy to see.

Click chart for pics and tasting notes (give members time to recover before expecting to see notes).